


i can see the universe (in your heart)

by mikkal



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Childhood Friends, Ensemble Cast, Fluff, Keyblade Wielder Kairi (Kingdom Hearts), Multi, Rewrite, Slow Burn, Worldbuilding, long fic, playing it fast and loose with canon lore
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-23
Updated: 2019-11-11
Packaged: 2020-12-28 23:23:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21144947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mikkal/pseuds/mikkal
Summary: Located deep into the rock of Play Island, there’s something called the Secret Place...They had a dream. A dream where the three of them would sail the ocean blue, find the edge of their world, and explore what's beyond that. But, when darkness comes — and it does come — Sora, Kairi, and Riku find themselves separated on strange worlds, possessing even stranger weapons, and more than desperate to find each other.There is something in the darkness, though, pulling strings and making plans. They don't know what role they play in these plans, but —— they do know this:nothing will keep them apart.(A story in which Destiny Islands falls a different way, all three of them get keyblades right away, and the universe is built a little more expansively, a little more detailed.)





	1. what if the storms ends (and I don't see you, as you are now, ever again)

_the closer you get to the light, the greater your shadow becomes._

_but don’t be afraid. and don’t forget—_

—

It happens on a day like any other, honestly.

There’s a storm on the horizon, slated to be one of the bigger ones this year, but while the adults are packing down for it with practiced traditions and air-tight standards, the kids are scattered off in the winds, doing what kids do when their parents shoo them from under their feet.

Which, on this side of the archipelago, means they end up on Play Island, the tiniest little island down south and only a ten-minute canoe ride if you know how to work a canoe properly. (No one tells Tidus he’s one of those who _doesn’t_, it always meant Selphie won their races and she is very protective of her win-streak even if it is by cheating…technically.)

(Okay, not technically. It’s totally cheating. Selphie, you _loser_.)

The Trio, as they’re called—Sora, Kairi, Riku—are on the east side, through the shack and over the hill, alternating between securing their half-built raft and Kairi trying half-heartedly to get the boys to focus—only to have them dissolve into clumsy sparring with splintered wooden swords despite her admittedly lackluster attempts.

She watches for a moment, hands on her hips, and huffs a lock of hair from her face. Waits a little longer, wondering if they’ll notice her glare, lets them get a few hits in before she calls it. Because gods forbid Riku and Sora manage through a few hours without whacking each other with slabs of wood with no mind towards, you know, violent injury or anything.

“I’m not your mother,” she says flatly. Sora’s the only one who reacts, a twitch of guilt and flicker of dread across his face, but he doesn’t stop.

“I am not your keeper.” Here he falters, inadvertently letting Riku gain the upper hand. The older boy takes it with an ugly cackle, Sora has to fold nearly in half to avoid the swipe.

“I refuse to count to three like you’re _children_.”

At fourteen (Sora and Kairi) and fifteen (Riku), there are plenty of people who would argue that they are indeed children, but of course, teenagers would argue back they aren’t—because they’re _children_ and don’t realize how much life experience they’re actually missing.

Besides that particular point, Kairi’s thinly veiled threats do the trick. Riku quickly defeats the distracted Sora with a one-two punch of a feint then a low sweep of his leg that takes out Sora’s knees.

“Cheater!”

“All’s fair,” Riku replies with a smirk.

He does help Sora up though, jerking him a little too hard and causing the younger teen to fall into him, face to chest. Kairi rolls her eyes at their antics, especially the way Sora’s entire face turns bright red and he lurches away from Riku with frantic sputtering. Nerds.

The three of them go back to securing their raft. Their raft that started as a one-off, almost a joke idea spoken by Riku sometime last year, then Sora latched onto it in surprising intensity, then Kairi with a touch of thoughtfulness.

_I wonder if there’s anything else out there_, Riku’d said, a tone of wondering wistfulness. They’d always entertained the thought Kairi came from not mainland or an island they’d never heard of like the adults kept saying, but instead from a far-off world and fell to theirs like a shooting star.

(Because what neither Riku nor Sora ever told anyone, is that they _saw _an abnormally large shooting star streaking across the sky moments before Kairi washed up on shore without a shipwreck to accompany her. She had puffs of light in her hair, liked she’d come through a star field and caught them on her way, and while Sora ran to get help, Riku had touched her hand and got the _zap_! of his life.)

None of them are sure if a raft is actually going to get them to where they need/want/wish to go, but it’s better than sitting in class with the constant urge to leave and explore and maybe one day have the spark of realization that they were meant for more than their islands.

They love their islands, yeah, but their world always felt so small. Or maybe they felt too big. Too big bones wrapped up in too small skin, stretched and stretched until it felt like something had to give—and they didn’t want it to be them, to be the first to break.

They wrap up the sail, pin it to the mast, and drag the flat bed onto the sand, far enough away that if the ocean swells and roars it won’t crash the waves high enough to snatch up their hard work. The horizon is getting darker by the minute and if one of them squinted they would see that the thin line where the ocean meets the sky is no longer smooth and flat but undulating with distressingly deep pulls and pushes.

Sora’s the one who looks out, hand shielding his eyes from the sun that’s slowly disappearing behind angry grey clouds. He presses his lips together in a thin line and tries to decide what the weird feeling in his chest is—a little bit of anxiety from the idea of a bad storm, a little bit of fear of being caught in the canoe when it hits, a little bit of dread that should really be attributed to both of those things, but that doesn’t seem quite right. The dread is for something completely different, completely unknown.

And that makes it so much worse. It rises just like the waves, choppy and dangerous, and overwhelming.

“Race?” Riku asks. He tosses a wayward blitzball from hand to hand, looking mostly bored and a bit concerned if his raised eyebrow means anything. He doesn’t say anything about the uncharacteristically shadowed look on their normally bright, happy-go-lucky friend. Kairi grimaces at his suggestion. He shrugs. “Just one, before we have to head back in. Winner gets to pick the drink.”

‘The drink’ being either hot chocolate (Sora), honey and milk (Kairi), or, surprisingly enough, tea (Riku). Post-dinner, which Sora’s mom is making this time along with hosting the weekly sleepover. And since it’s at Sora’s that means puppy piling onto his bed against his unnecessarily large window with the sounds of the television playing in the background, just loud enough to drown out the storm.

No one can deny that this sort of thing is _exactly_ how they make _all_ decisions. Racing. Sparring. The occasional climbing. Forget actual methods of communication and all that.

Riku got to name the raft (_Highwind_), pick their post-school adventures for three weeks in a row (one week was ice cream for seven days in a row, the next two weeks was a more manageable café hangout. Kairi couldn’t look at ice cream for at least a month without feeling a little sick.), and he got to choose what color Sora’s sunglasses were going to be for the summer since his last pair were smashed by a bully only a few weeks ago (he went with a stylish pink pair and Sora has to be convinced to take them off), and a _billion_ other things because he’s a runner and, really, they should think their challenges more thoroughly.

Sora got to pick what color _Highwind’s_ sail was going to be (blue, because he’s predictable. Though it had been a toss-up between that and red.). He also got to decide what they did on their yearly trip to the Big Island—Kairi’s dad always had some business up north as mayor of their island and once a year the Trio’s families made it a big adventure. That was probably the most epic win he’s ever had and will never have again.

Poor Kairi, as both someone who really doesn’t like running and perfers climbing (Sora a close second on that preference) and either doesn’t participate in the races or loses more often than not, hardly gets to have final say in their decisions. If they were only including races (decision making ones or otherwise) from this week alone the score is 7-4-0, and she’s done _at least _five of those races.

Sometimes she won through pure common sense, like the time Riku and Sora got the bright idea to steal chemicals from school and melt the handle off the Mysterious Door in the Secret Place. They didn’t even need a race for that. Or when Riku won yet another race and she challenged him to a rock-climbing contest to pick the ultimate winner. Of course, she won and got to pick their Friday night dinners for a month, with Riku paying once from his crap after-school job at the docks.

As she doesn’t mind hot chocolate or tea and really doesn’t feel like taking off her floppy sandals to run and jump properly, she shakes her head. “Tap out,” she announces. “Don’t take any detours, I wanna get out of here before _that_ hits.”

At first, they think she’s pointing towards the storm as a whole, the super obvious looming storm they’ve known about for a few days now since the forecast picked it up swirling from the mainland coast. But then they notice a thick black cloud cracking crisp branches of lightning, thunder loud enough to hear clearly even from this far.

“Maybe we shouldn’t,” Sora says somewhat nervously. He tugs on the crown charm of his necklace, rubbing it between his fingers as he stares at the cloud. “That looks really close.”

Riku nudges his shoulder. “It’ll be _fine_,” he says with confidence only a fifteen-year-old who thinks he’s invincible could have. “C’mon.”

With one last look, Sora gets into starting position next to Riku. Kairi raises her hand in the air, pauses long enough to watch them squirm, then drops it with no warning whatsoever, shouting “_Go_!” with as much energy as possible.

In the end Riku wins…again. Massive surprise.

Sora wishes he could say it was neck-in-neck, but honestly, he forgot about the loose boards on the broken bridge and fell right to the water, landing on his feet thankfully. He’d learned long ago with Kairi in a bouldering class how to roll with the drops, so no injuries. (yay!)

It took just enough off his pace that Riku won by mere seconds with a boastful cheer. And as soon as Sora appeared, he dragged the shorter boy into a friendly headlock, ruffling his hair despite Sora’s protests.

“Let’s go,” Sora says when he finally escapes. He pretends he’s not pouting. 8-4-0. Ugh, and that’s only by races! To add even more to the embarrassment, when he turns to go through the shack, he stubs his toe on a rock in the sand and promptly trips.

Kairi can’t smother her laughter in time and Sora’s face burns red once again. He rubs his foot before burying his hand in the sand and coming up with an unnaturally smooth black rock, the edge of it embedded with a strip emerald green that catches the scant beams of sunlight and burns with an internal green fire. It’s the size of his palm and just as a thin.

He squints his eyes at it, turning it every which way. Nothing exciting happens. It looks like something exciting should happen. Riku looms over his shoulder with a comment on how pretty it is and that’s enough to convince him to keep it. Sora shoves it into his pocket and uses Riku’s unwilling elbow to heave himself up.

They pack up, grabbing bags and shoes and finding wayward belts from their uniforms. Last day of the semester had only been today, after all. Riku gets voluntold to row the canoe, with Kairi and Sora clustered on the opposite end to make it as unsteady as possible. He scowls at them with narrowed eyes and puts extra _oomph_ into each pull and push.

If he thinks his dramatics make them feel guilty, he’s totally off the mark.

—

No one sees the blotch of shadow amass on the shoreline, the other children long gone before the Trio finally decided to leave. No one sees the way it moves like an ink blot on oiled paper or the way it eventually pulls itself from the ground until it’s a skittering, hunched over figure of darkness and shadow and two wide yellow eyes looking this way and that.

No one sees that where one appears, more follow.

And more.

…and _more_.

—

Located deep into the rock of Play Island, there’s something called the Secret Place. It’s only accessible by a long winding tunnel far too small for any of the children to navigate easily anymore, but that hasn’t stopped them from adding new drawing and paintings over top previous, long faded, artistic endeavors.

In the back of this cave, wooden and old, its frame tarnished wrought iron better made for the gardens of haunted mansions than a door on a tiny island where iron isn’t really a thing, is a locked door.

The same door Sora and Riku thought to melt, the same door that Tidus once tried to burn when he somehow got his hands on a pack of matches. No one knows where this door came from or when it appeared, or why they can’t even seem to damage it, they just know it’s there and that no one, _no one_, can open it.

Doesn’t stop Sora dreaming about it, though.

If they could be called dreams. More like nightmares. Between moments of mirrors and flashes of colored glass, sometimes he dreams about this door sitting open, exposing a gaping void of darkness that slowly crawls outward like it’s going to consume anything light and good in the world—and then once the world, the realm.

Once the realm, the universe.

Sometimes he dreams about a different door in its place, white and ornate with sparkling panes of glass. Elegant and otherworldly compared to the plain-looking wooden door it’s replacing. But where he expects light to come from the elegant door, there is only darkness still.

The doors are always open. Always, always.

Except—

The dream he has the first night of storm…it has the wooden door as normal, emanating malice and despair and a hunger he can’t even begin to comprehend but—.

It’s not open.

Darkness seeps from the bottom of it instead. Tendrils of shadows that coil over rock face, scorch old chalk drawings, and peel paint. Like it’s scratching under surfaces to the pale parts inside as it searches for something it hasn’t been able to find in a long time.

(a voice, soft and shivery in the way ghosts are, whispers_, “and the pendulum swings _back.”)

Sora. Sora’s stuck in the middle of the cave, heart pounding in his chest, knees quaking, hands sweating. When the darkness touches his face, loops around his wrists. When the door creaks open just a little and then just…_stop_s.

When a hand appears, curling over the edge of the door ever so slowly, fingers long and spindly.

That’s when Sora wakes up.

—

(_don’t be afraid. don’t forget_.)

—

As it turns out, the storm wasn’t nearly as bad as the forecast and the old aunties said it would be. It blows through in only a few days, drowning exactly one shore and destroying a house slated to be demolished next week anyway. Honestly, it doesn’t even make it up north to the Big Island, rendering their own preparations moot.

(A few people do go missing throughout the days, but that’s, unfortunately, how it works. They tried to travel and got swept up by floods. Something they thought secure came loose and they went out to fix it, only to get blown away.

It’s a completely normal if unfortunate fact of big storms, if you ignore that even after a few days post-storm of searching they still can’t find any bodies.)

After the storm, even with the sky still a moody grey, the birds are screeching their racket and Play Island is back in business.

Riku arrives in the afternoon, kept back by merely waking up late, unsettled by strange dreams he doesn’t remember anymore.

He finds Kairi leaning against the _Highwind_’s mast, fiddling with a cluster of Thalassa shells and a length of thin rope. She doesn’t even bother glancing up when he leans on the mast with her, looking over her shoulder to see her deft fingers thread the rope through a carefully punctured hole and knot it expertly.

The shells are their natural pink where they’re the widest then faded into tan at the ends. Each one has a rounded yellow star with a tuff of green on two points painted on the inside. A paopu fruit, he smiles.

“For Sora?”

Kairi hums an affirmative, threading another loop.

“Where is he anyway?” he asks. She gestures towards the shoreline and he follows the direction to a splay of red swim trunks and sun-brown skin on the sand. Sora, asleep, heedless of the cool waves curling over his legs. “Seriously?”

Kairi laughs. “I woke him up last time,” she says.

And nearly knocked heads. Luckily, she managed to dodge before they got bruises. That was when she decided to send him on a merry chase of finding coconuts and spearing fish under the pretense of packing it up for the trip they wouldn’t take for a few more months until their raft was ready.

“Your turn.”

Riku huffs a dramatic sigh, enough to make her laugh again and he smiles a pleased little smile at making her laugh, and casually wanders over to where their wayward friend sleeps the day away. Sora doesn’t seem to be sleeping well, though, the corner of his lips turned down and a furrow between his brows, eyes flickering back and forth under his lids.

He’s been having a few bad dreams lately; they both know this despite his attempts to keep ‘em quiet. That’s what made him startle so badly when Kairi woke him last time. That’s what woke them up the first night of the storm, him jerking awake in bed and rolling off to the floor with a loud _thunk! _only to assure them nothing was wrong, nothing happened.

(Sora only lies to make them feel better, not realizing it makes them feel worse.)

But from the twist of his expression they must be some pretty terrible nightmares, too terrible to be considered just _bad dreams_. Riku’s stomach drops a bit. He never likes seeing his friends hurt in any way, even if the emotional sort of hurt leaves him at a loss for what to do.

(It’s the reason why he got in trouble for punching out the dude who broke Sora’s sunglasses for no reason other than Sora liked them and is the most prone to crying out of the Trio. His answer to emotional hurt is always physical violence, it’d be more worrying if he didn’t have Kairi and Sora as both the instigators (however reluctantly and unknowingly) and the people keeping him back.)

Sora mutters something nonsense under his breath and shifts, lashes fluttering. Riku goes to shake him awake (keeping his head out of the collision zone), but when he reaches just an inch from Sora’s chest, his friend’s eyes snap open and he _smirks_ before throwing both arms around Riku’s neck and yanking him down.

The mad scramble that follows leads to Riku face down in the sand and Sora cackling on the middle of his back, feet shoved under Riku’s armpits. He spits out sand, glaring at where Kairi is folded in half on the ground laughing to the point of tears.

“You planned this!” Riku shrieks.

More laughter.

Riku squirms frantically, trying to dislodge his traitorous friend, only to have Kairi come over and promptly sit on his legs. Oh, hell no, traitorous _friends_. Plural. Both of them. Not cool. Totally not cool.

“Were you even sleeping?” he demands, his voice still pitched higher than it should. His face burns pink then red when Kairi. Won’t. Stop. _Laughing_.

Sora wipes his face free of tears, hiccupping as he tries to catch his breath. “Actually, yeah, I was.” He pokes Riku in the cheek only to retract quickly when the older boy snaps his teeth at wayward fingers. “Bad dog,” he chastises mildly, Riku growls. “It’s not my fault you clomp around loud enough to wake the spirits.”

“…How do you _clomp _around on _sand_?”

The resulting answer is merely a shrug, off set by the mischievous twinkle in Sora’s eyes. Collectively, they pause as they take in this very tremulous moment they’ve wandered into. Then with a roar Riku _shoves_ himself up, throwing Kairi and Sora off with only a bit of a struggle. Kairi screams when she ends up in the surf, now completely soaked. Sora yelps as he goes flying, creating a trail in the sand like some sort of low altitude meteor.

He comes to a wide-eyed stop, staring as Riku cracks his knuckles and advances with a devilishly evil smirk. “You don’t want to do this,” Sora pleads, scrambling to his feet and backing away slowly. Both hands are out like that’s enough to placate Riku when he’s out for well-deserved revenge. “C’mon, Ri-Ri. Don’t be like this.”

The nickname seals Sora’s fate.

Now Sora’s the one shrieking as he turns heel and takes off in a dead sprint, Riku lunging after him with a snarl. Their chaos drags the other kids’ attention, especially when Sora slams through the hut to the west side where everyone else hangs out. (“Oh, that’s what that was. I thought it was a bird,” someone remarks in reference to Sora’s screaming, “a really _loud_ bird.”)

Riku tackles him in the little waterfall created pond off to the side of the treehouse and digs his fingers mercilessly into his sides. Sora shrieks again, this time in laughter instead of feigned fear. (“Wow, those are some loud birds today.” “…You’re not funny.”)

When Sora’s red faced and breathless, unable to call for mercy or even yield, Riku gives him a break, sitting back on his heels and watches his friend try to catch his breath. He notices then, the shadows carved deep under his friend’s eyes and he can’t but frown, leaning in close until they’re practically nose-to-nose.

“What do you dream about?” Riku asks.

His friend startles, eyes widening, breath catching so sharply in his chest he coughs. He scrambles out of the water as he does. Kairi thumps a careful hand across his back, eyeing Riku questioningly. The older teen shrugs in confusion and concern, thoroughly thrown off kilter. He hadn’t expected his question to get that kind of reaction.

The rest of the kids scatter now that the most elusive Trio are no longer actively drawing their attention, leaving Riku thigh deep in the pond, Sora sitting curved back on the edge, and Kairi fluttering helplessly around him. The two of them wait somewhat patiently for Sora to compose himself, burning with curiosity (and regret on Riku’s part, he almost wants to take the question back, but he knows he can’t).

Sora coughs one last time, his breathing still a little shuddery but stable, and waves a hand to the entrance of the Secret Place as if that’s enough of an answer. Eventually “The Mysterious Door,” gets muttered out, clarifying to Riku’s furrowed brows and Kairi’s cocked head.

(Because Riku’s dreamed about the Secret Place before, but he can’t say the Door was ever important.)

(Because of all places on the island, the Secret Place is not the first thing Kairi dreams of, let alone the Door.)

“There’s something weird about it,” Sora continues. “I don’t like it.”

Kairi presses her lips together in a thin line, rocking back on her heels. “There’s always been something weird about it,” she reasons, though her face is pale under her enduring (endearing) pink sunburn. “No one likes it.”

Sora shakes his head. Riku wades closer and ducks to look into his eyes, though Sora makes it hard by tucking his chin tight to his collarbone, that spikey head of hair doing too fantastic a job of shadowing his face.

With halting, unsure words, Sora finds the voice to describe his dreams. They’re fleeting now, faded, and sometimes he stumbles over a description that he really shouldn’t with how often he’s dreamt about it, but he gets it out—the two doors, the stained glass platforms, the shadows with yellow eyes, the voiceless words echoing in his head—and the response is silence.

Even with the roar of the waterfall, the cries of both seabirds and children, and the thunder of the ocean, it’s that silence that’s profound and all consuming.

Then Riku gets the urge to do something stupid.

“Let’s check it out.”

“What? No!” Sora wobbles to his feet.

“It’ll be fine,” Riku assures him with the same kind of rock-steadiness that gets them into all kinds of trouble. He’s older, he’s wiser, and even though Kairi has the better common sense out of the three of them, there’s always something about how Riku says _it’ll be fine_ that has people believing him. “Maybe if we look, it’ll show you the Door is the same as ever and you’ll stop having nightmares.”

“Let’s not,” Kairi interjects, worrying her bottom lip between teeth, eyes flickering from Riku to Sora to the entrance to the Secret Place then back all over again. “I don’t like it.”

“No one likes it,” Riku teases. He hops over the edge and strolls over so casually Sora finds himself following automatically. “It’ll be fine,” he says again, those three magical words.

Kairi hesitates before she too follows, searching out with a hand until her fingers tangle with Sora’s. He clings back with surprising white-knuckled ferocity and reaches out to snag the hem of Riku’s shirt. The older teen slows just a bit for them.

They enter the Secret Place without looking back.

This is a mistake.

Nothing was ever going to be fine.

—

_—don’t be afraid, for you hold the mightiest weapon of them all._

_so, don’t forget—you are the one who will open the door._


	2. to traverse a patchwork town

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They call it Traverse Town.

They call it Traverse Town—_to travel across or through_, which means nobody stays for long. It’s a pit stop, a hub world. It’s no one’s home and no one wants to call it home.

Not when the buildings and the streets are cobbled together versions of worlds that no longer live in their proper realm. That building is the candy shop from someone’s childhood, only missing everything that makes it such a fond memory. That street someone else kissed their first love, but the stone is all wrong, the buildings are all wrong, and the lampposts are _wrong._

The world is a memory of good things haunting everyone who lost something. Everything.

People stay away when they can, most of them reluctant when they have to make use of the shops and hotels. A few of them stay, sometimes by choice but usually not, to give the travelers a familiar face. The new arrivals get something closer to a friendly face, for when they learn their world is gone.

Gone, and never coming back they say.

Leon—once Squall because there are some things too painful to hold on to—is one of those people who stays. Not particularly of his own choice. No, that privilege belongs to the woman sitting next to him in this quaint café in First District. He’s always had a protective streak a mile wide even after everything and he can’t say he’ll let Aerith get into trouble (_again_) without him as back up. So, she chooses to stay, and he’ll stay too, for now.

He spots the kid first, stumbling out of the alleyway, dazed and confused as all new arrivals are. There’s no fear in the way he moves, just a curious sort of caution that makes him smile behind his coffee cup. The kids are always the bravest.

The kid is dressed for the beach—red swim trunks, white tank top, and hideous yellow sandals that could’ve, should’ve been bought as a prank—and his russet brown skin is made darker from long hours in the sun. His hair, a tone or two lighter for the same reasons, is a spikey mess that can only be natural with how ridiculous it is.

When he stumbles closer Leon can see freckles, as countless as the stars at night, and bright blue eyes, depthless and guileless as a cloudless sky. Leon nudges Aerith with his elbow, jostling her drink a little too hard, and jerks his chin towards the kid when she turns questioning eyes to him.

“Got another one for you.”

She frowns at the sight of the kid, sighing something heavy and sad. Adults, or those considered so by their own world’s rules, are a rarity. It’s children who come from fallen worlds with hearts untouched by the darkness that consumed their homes, scared and alone. Aerith tries to gather them up when she can, but, in the end, there’s only one of her and countless heartless preying on the festering darkness that comes from being afraid.

Don’t even think about the children that land on worlds that don’t have kind strangers such as Aerith.

By the time they make it out of the café, the kid is gone. For a moment, Leon thinks he made it into Second District, but the thought is easy enough to dismiss. Second District has been empty for ages, overrun by heartless that are only kept back by Merlin’s magic. People don’t go there anymore, and someone chained up the doors a long time ago just to make sure.

But when they search for the kid, stopping by Cid’s shop just to make sure since his shop is the most noticeable in the main plaza and even venturing into the other three districts despite the doors being so far away it’d be impossible for the kid to make it in such little time, there’s absolutely no sign of him.

Did he venture out of the city into the wild parts of this world? Did someone disappear him? Did a _heartless_ get to him already?

…Did he really make it to Second District?

“Grab Yuffie,” Aerith orders, sweeping her long brown ponytail into a tight bun on the crown of her head. She’s already shoved Materia—magic from her world that still, for some reason, works all the way out here—into her bracelet. A Cure and a Barrier, there’s a smaller Fire and a larger Blizzard. Leon only know these from experience not because he has any knowledge on how Materia works, “and check Second District. I’ll see if he’s beaten me to the hotel.”

Leon long ago stopped raising an eyebrow when Aerith orders him around. It’s a habit long kicked even before he came to Traverse Town and it’s served him well when the full might of Aerith, Yuffie, and occasionally Tifa (when she shows up) bear down on him. He’s never met Cloud, the fifth survivor along with Cid Highwind from their world Midgar, but he’s heard enough stories to know that he’s not alone when it comes to the women taking control.

(Every now and then Leon lets himself get overwhelmed with his own personal loss. He’s yet to run into anyone from his own world Balamb and he tries not to think about that too hard.)

With those orders in mind, he grabs Yuffie from the Moogle Shop, and they slip into a water way that leads into Second District. It’s out of the way enough they don’t usually worry about people accidentally stumbling upon it but judging from the footsteps in the silt built up on the narrow walkways the kid somehow made it.

“Are you kidding me?” Yuffie asks, hands on her hips and annoyance on her face as they stand before Merlin’s barrier keeping heartless on the other side until they can figure out how to deal with them. “And you said this was a kid? A new arrival?”

Leon nods, hand carefully situated on the grip of his gunblade, and eyes the shimmering…hole in the barrier. Okay, well it’s not exactly a _hole_ per say. Undisturbed, the barrier is invisible. Messed with, and it turns gold. That’s usually the early warning sign that the heartless are getting restless.

Here, now. The barrier is flickering gold, but there’s a slight off-set of yellow the same size and shape as the kid. Like he just…walked right through. Which only happens when you have fairly powerful magic—or in the case of people from Midgar and probably various others, have fairly powerful magical items like Materia.

It’s not totally out there for the kid to have regular ol’ levels of magic…

But this?

Yuffie summons her shuriken Conformer with a quippy remark about curiosity and cats and small children. Leon resists the urge to remind her she’s still a kid in his eyes at only eighteen and that their new kid probably can’t be considered a small child even if he is younger.

Leon finally unsheathes Revolver and, with a hand pressed flat against the barrier, side eyes Yuffie. “Ready?”

“Get on with it, slowpoke.”

They step through together. Instantly they feel the pressure caused by too much darkness in one place. It slaps the air out of his lungs, Yuffie actually staggers. It’s been so long since they’ve come to Second District, they’d forgotten how bad it is.

How much worse it’s gotten.

The eerie part is—there’s two fresh hearts entering Second District. Two hearts steeped in loss and anger and regret for things before Traverse and things after Traverse. And yet, the heartless don’t come.

“Um, Squall?” Yuffie whispers nervously.

For once, he doesn’t correct her.

Leon calls fire magic to his free hand as the two of them creep along the waterway, ears on the lookout for the spine-shivering sounds of heartless skittering around. They call the small common ones bugs for their skittering movements and big bug-like yellow eyes, though Aerith insists they should be called shadows.

The hotel, accessible through both Second and Third Districts on either side, comes up on their left. The barrier glitters gold in the tell-tale signs of heartless throwing themselves at it and, thankfully, it doesn’t appear to have been weakened under combined attacks. The last time that happened had been a nightmare.

They don’t hear the young girl crying, after all she’s on the other side of the plaza. Nor do they hear the clanking of soldier heartless as they clamor for a chance at her heart.

What they do hear, though, is the sharp sound of metal against stone and a young boyish voice shouting.

Leon’s in front when they appear from under the stairs—shoes soaked through and, from their knees down, dripping—and they’re greeted with the sight of the kid they’ve been searching for standing protectively in front of a crying girl.

And surrounded by heartless.

Before their very eyes, the kid takes a wide swing out with a strange looking weapon, cutting through the horde like butter. The bugs—shadows—go down with one hit, but the soldiers with their armor take a few more whacks. The kid dances away from the girl a few times, hitting as hard as he can, only to twirl back around just before a heartless tries their luck.

Gradually her crying stops as she notices the heartless being taken care of swiftly if clumsily.

Yuffie takes out an orb of Materia and lets her shuriken disappear. “Well, I feel mighty useless,” she says before casting Wall around the _actual_ child that _somehow _made it past the barrier. How did she escape Aerith? How did she get down here? Leon can feel a headache forming, which, you know, fantastic.

Leon rolls his eyes and casts fire at the fringes, several shadows going up in flames, then takes an easy leap forward to end up in the middle of the crowd.

“Hey!” the kid calls. He’s grinning, strained around the edges because who wouldn’t be scared in a situation like this? Though Leon can admire the attempt to keep a brave face in front of the little girl. “Where did you come from?”

“Focus,” Leon orders. The kid blinks at him in surprise for only the briefest second before he nods sharply and, realizing the girl is protected by a barrier, slides away from the wall they’d been backed against and takes out another cluster with a wide swing.

It’d be interesting to see if the power of those wide swings comes from the weapon itself or the magic inherently in the teen.

The kid’s obviously never been trained but there’s a fluidity in his attacks. He’s got runner calves and relatively well-developed muscles in his arms for a teenager. He handles his key-like weapon—key-like in the sense that it’s a _giant frickin’ key_, silver and gold, with crown shaped teeth and a three-circle charm dangling from its guard—like he’s use to it, some flourishes here and there that really are dance-like.

“Take that!” the kid shouts after a well-placed hit dissolves a soldier in a single strike. He barks out a laugh strained even beyond that smile before whirling on another.

Yuffie ushers the girl back through the waterway as the two of them finish off the heartless. When the last one disappears in a puff of smoke, a crystalline pink heart floating to the sky, Leon doesn’t even let the kid catch his breath before he’s grabbing him by the bicep and dragging him out of Second District just a few feet behind Yuffie and the girl splashing around.

Neither of them notices the key’s disappearance.

“What—?”

“Second District is off-limits,” Leon says gruffly. He hangs Revolver back at his side and swings the kid in front of him to use both hands to march him back into First.

“How was I supposed to know that?” It sounds like he’s pouting. “There aren’t any signs.”

Leon whirls him around and points emphatically at the golden barrier they just went through. “That’s your sign. I don’t know how you found the waterway, but don’t do it again. The heartless don’t care if you’re a kid.”

The kid faces him with a scowl, his eyes still that depthless blue but now Leon’s reminded of a storm on the horizon. Not here yet but soon. “I’m not a kid,” he argues. Oh, he’s definitely pouting. Despite everything he says otherwise, he’s a kid. “My name’s Sora.”

“_Sora_!” the little girl wails, fighting off Yuffie to launch herself at Sora’s knees. He catches her easily, kneeling down until they’re eye level and he’s thumbing away her tears.

“Hey, hey,” he soothes. “I’m okay. You’re okay. It’s over now, promise.” The girl throws her arms around his neck, clinging tightly to him. He wraps her up in an equally tight hug. “Sofia, it’s okay.”

“I was so scared,” she sobs into his neck.

Ah, Sofia. Leon recognizes the name if only based off Aerith’s stories. A bit of a troublemaker with too big a heart and a whole bunch of magic she doesn’t know what to do with. That would explain how she got past the barrier.

“C’mon,” Yuffie says, tugging gently on Sofia’s curls but doesn’t even try to separate the two. “Aerith is at the hotel. Let’s go, yeah? I’m sure she’s worried sick about you, kid.” To Sora she says, “And, dude, you need better clothes and we need an explanation.” 

Sora hefts Sofia up easily, her legs wrapped around his waist. “An explanation about what?”

No one answers him. Sora follows readily enough, if only because he’s carrying Sofia… and he has nowhere else to go. They all try to ignore the stares that stick to them through First into Third. Yuffie chatters with Sofia, draws answers from a quiet and growing quieter Sora. Everything’s hitting him now—the fate of his world, this new world, the heartless, the giant key—and his feet are dragging.

They get answers to his age (“_Fourteen_.”) and his world (“_I’m from Destiny Islands_?”) but anything beyond those insignificant things, like how he knew where Sofia was and what his weapon is, they get nothing. His questions go equally unanswered because this isn’t the place for them, not with Sora under dressed for Traverse’s chilly but not cold weather, not with Sofia falling asleep against his shoulder, worn out by all the chaos. Not with the bruise forming too dark on the side of his face and blood staining the hem of his tank top.

They meet Aerith on the stoop of the hotel, her just about to meet them in Second District when she realized Sofia was gone and connected the dots.

Back in the hotel, four levels of long hallways with the top two given to Aerith and her strays, Aerith fusses over both of them. Sora more than Sofia only because she’s least injured and bouncing back in the way only young kids can. She gets sent to her designated room on the fourth floor with the promise of punishment involving kitchen duty for the next month for what she pulled.

Sofia, who actually likes cooking and dishes, is reluctant to leave her savior, but goes when Sora gives her a wobbly smile and asks her to. She hugs him one more time, apologizes and thanks him and promises _him_ she won’t do it again. Aerith smiles in exasperation.

Sora gets loose sweatpants and an even looser sweatshirt pulled from the donated clothes closet and a blanket around his shoulders. Aerith makes him a drink, all but shoving it into his hands. He clings to the warmth, head bowed, toes inverted towards each other, shoulders trembling just a bit as she casts a low-level Cure over him.

He was so shout-y during the fight, seeing him so quiet now is eerie, disconcerting.

“What’s this?” Sora asks in a quiet voice on the verge of breaking, of shattering into a million little pieces strangers like these—no matter how kind—aren’t equipped to handle. Sora’s too old to bounce back like a child, but too young to shoulder the burden (no matter how bad an idea that is, no matter what age).

Aerith stares at him with big green eyes for a long moment before she reluctantly, knowingly, answers: “Milk and honey.”

Through an entirety of coincidences: _Kairi’s drink_.

That’s enough to tip him over the edge.

She wraps him up in a tight hug, petting his hair carefully as he cries against her. Leon silently takes his drink before it drops to the floor and joins Yuffie in the corner, both trying to blend into the wallpaper. Sora clings to this nice woman who gave him clothes and a hot drink, who will give him hot food and a place to sleep, and he tries not to think about his mom and his friends and his _world_.

“Where am I?” he asks through sobs cracking his chest. Yuffie slips out of the room but he doesn’t even notice. Leon only stays because of Aerith’s pleading look though he has no idea what kind of use he’ll be.

“We call it Traverse Town,” Aerith tells him, voice as soft as cotton and as careful as a mouse. “You’re safe here. I promise.”

He shakes his head and, through the fringe of his hair, pins Leon with crystalline blue eyes that has the older man freezing in place. “I don’t care about that,” he says. “I don’t care. Where are _my friends_?”

—

Sora can’t leave this world.

He can’t leave, he can’t go find his friends. He’s _stuck_. He kind of just wants to wallow in the despair of it, but he plasters on a smile instead. Sometimes it’s a real smile, when he plays with the little kids just as stuck as him, but younger and handling it so much better, when he gets to chat with the people who made this world something more like a home (for some).

Other times, not so much.

When that happens, he goes out to the town. Slipping past Aerith, though he’s sure she sees him leaving, he goes exploring to the first world he’s ever been other than home. It’s so different than his, so patchworked and gloomy, everyone here is a little sad, a little wistful, but occasionally there’s a sense of routine and companionship that picks them up. He kind of loves it, love how everyone works so hard to make this a home, to smile and laugh and joke even when everything is bearing down on them. Helplessness, hopelessness. They don’t let it get to them, not fully.

He meets Cid in the accessory shop, gets a few lessons on Gummi Ships—which no one here has and he’s unlikely to use. The shop doesn’t have enough to make a full ship, he’s told, only to patch them up when visitors come by. But he gets to see blueprints from Huey, Dewy, and Louie and even more lectures about the best way to set up thrusters versus shields so as not to sacrifice defense over speed.

He meets the Moogle that can make wondrous items from magical materials people bring it. There he remembers his keyblade—his Kingdom Key, something somewhere told him—and hopes the Moogle can tell him anything about it.

“Kupo!” it exclaims, the ball on its head going boingboing_boing_ in excitement. “I never thought I’d see one of these again!”

“You know it?” he asks eagerly.

The Moogle pats his hand. “You have a destiny ahead of you, kupo,” it says solemnly. “One that’s going to be jam-packed with the type of things only fairy tales are made of, kupo.” 

And that’s all it will speak of it, much to Sora’s frustration.

It’s not until the next day that he remembers the rock he’s transferred from pocket to pocket as Yuffie keeps shoving different clothes in his arms until they can find a style he’s comfortable in and she approves. The ninja-girl gets way too much pleasure out of using him as a dress up doll.

He goes back to the Moogle, the rock in hand though it has more emerald than he remembers. Back home the green was a line between two black sides, like a strange looking sandwich. Now the green stains one of the black stones, encroaching on it.

Outshining it.

The Moogle looks at the stone, then back at Sora. Even though it has perpetually closed eyes and no real range of expression, Sora can’t help but twitch under the scrutiny.

“Where did you find this, kupo?”

Sora scratches the back of his head, grinning sheepishly. “My home world,” he replies. “Destiny Islands. It was just lying in the sand.”

The Moogle shakes its head. Sora follows the ball as it boings again, like a cat with a feather toy. “Hold onto that,” it tells him, “it’ll help, kupo.”

“What does that mean?” Sora all but begs, but the Moogle doesn’t answer.

So, then, Sora more or less refuses to see the Moogle again. _Refuses_. Okay?

He’s heard the stories of the great Merlin, a Master Sorcerer if there ever was one, and how he’s the one keeping the heartless contained in Second District. He has a house here in Traverse but isn’t always there. Sora wonders if he will be able to tell him anything, about the keyblade, about the stone, about the strange door back home, or even a way to get off this world so he can _find his friends._

There’s no one else he’s willing to ask. Aerith is too intimidating despite her smiles and soft voice. Leon is too cranky, he’s pretty sure he’ll jus turned away. Besides, both of them seemed so worried about him and Sofia—they didn’t even _know him_—the first time around and have been balls of overprotective anxiety since then. Though Leon shows it less than Aerith, his is mostly short phrases and dragging Sora somewhere to teach him how to dodge properly.

(He’ll be feeling those bruises for a while.)

Yuffie will just tease him for a bit then refuse to tell him. Cid won’t tell him, piled under his shop as he is. The Moogle is entirely tight lipped about anything useful even if Sora wasn’t frustrated at it. He’s asked the café barista, the one Leon and Aerith were in when Sora first came to this world, but she just shrugged before offering him a new concoction of a drink (_“Oh, wow, that’s uh…” “It’s coconut!” “I would’ve never—maybe some pineapple?” “Oooh, yes!”). _Huey, Dewy, and Louie told him they would love to point out Merlin’s house, but they have no idea where it is.

Frustration leads him out of First District into Third, then into Fourth, searching alleys for that shimmer of the magic that originally brought him into Second District.

He’d been overwhelmed by the world he had dropped into, but he’ll never forget that strange little spark on the edge of his awareness. The barrier had caught his attention, but it was only when he slid through the magic that he was crushed by the too-familiar feeling of the heartless.

(He doesn’t remember how Destiny Islands fell—and it fell. Fell to darkness, that’s the only way he ended up here—but he has a feeling it had to do with these heartless. And the Secret Place, because that’s the last thing he remembers. Him, Kairi, and Riku walking into the tunnel.

Then, nothing.)

Sofia felt like a light in the darkness. He’s hoping Merlin, or at least Merlin’s house, will feel the same way.

Sora passes an alleyway, lost in thought, then double backs when something shiny catches his eye. He almost thought it was munny, but as he draws closer to it, he realizes that behind these worn boards blocking the end of the alley, is a shimmer of the barrier encompassing Second District.

He tears down the boards with ease then hesitates. Leon had been so mad at him for waltzing into Second, Aerith won’t stop lecturing him about being careful (with Yuffie giggling in the background and calling her a hypocrite. Why though, she wouldn’t explain).

But—

Part of the lecture was about recognizing the barrier so he wouldn’t “accidentally” pass through it, about how it’s invisible until someone or something touches it with magic or darkness. It’s invisible to him just by eye, he can _feel_ the magic radiating off of it, which is how he found it.

This barrier, though, stands gold.

Instincts he shouldn’t have, not yet, have him summoning Kingdom Key, his hand pressed lightly against the barrier. He presses harder until there’s sparks, then harder until his hand passes through. There’s no resistance, there never has been.

The door to Second isn’t chained up like the others, like whoever set up the wooden boards thought no one would bother coming this way—and yeah, Fourth and Fifth District are the emptiest, barest districts. (There’s a sixth district forming, though, and the adults keeps eyeing the door with unease.) Sora wiggles the door, just to see if it’s locked,

and it opens a crack.

Already he can hear the clang of the armored ones, the soldiers, and the chittering of shadows. Something crackles in his chest, in his heart. He thumps a fist against his sternum, taking a deep breath that catches.

Something’s wrong in there. Something’s wrong and someone has to do something about it. If he’s careful, nothing bad should happen, right? Maybe this will help him figure things out. Maybe this will bring Merlin back to Traverse so he can talk to him.

Maybe he’ll find a way off this world.

Resolute, Sora steps through the door.


End file.
